July 7, 2026. Tuesday.
A letter to an old friend:
Jonathan and I are, unusually, spending a week at a chalet on a lake in the Laurentians. It is, for the most part, absolutely silent here except for the occasional bird call and the wind in the leaves. The house is owned by a music teacher, a friend of a friend, and has a Steinway baby grand, so I’ve been making some sound on my own, but by and large it is a complete change from the noise and movement of the city. The lake house that we sold, in upstate New York, was peaceful but you always heard voices, traffic on the highway, airplanes, lawn mowers and string trimmers. When we first arrived here, I was overcome with nostalgia and even grief about that place which I loved, but I’ve adjusted quickly to slowing down and appreciating the quiet, and this place for its own virtues. I don’t know if I could live this way permanently -- this area seems much more isolated than where you are, even -- but it is reminding me how much I enjoy being in nature and solitude.
This house also has a lovely garden. It’s set up pretty high above the lake, in a wooded area, and the garden is just below the house on several terraces along wide stone steps that go down to the water. There’s a small lily pond with frogs, and a nice mix of shrubs, rugosa roses, small evergreens, and perennials. Not nearly as ambitious, large, or beautiful as your garden but very nice. Of course there are plenty of insects, including the biting kind!
I’ve been trying to meditate in the mornings, which is certainly easier here. In any case, all of this has made me think of you, which I do often anyway, but especially so in this place.
I hope you’re doing well and are in reasonably good health. We are both feeling our age more now, but, knock on wood, nothing major is wrong yet. We’re still traveling as much as we can -- we were in Naples and eastern Sicily in the fall, and Mexico City in March for three weeks. I think about mortality more these days, and that’s probably not helped by the world situation, but I try to keep being creative, to read a lot, make music, and stay engaged. My spiritual life feels more complicated than ever, or maybe it’s actually more simple. It doesn’t center on the cathedral but is much more internal. I miss talking to you about all of the important things.
We both send many, many good wishes.
Looking out from the house in the early morning, I saw some strange, roundish, pebble-like clouds over the far shore. They inspired me to go down to the dock and do a watercolor sketch. It went pretty well. Later in the morning I sent a photograph of the watercolor to a friend, who found everything convincing but the clouds, which looked very… “pebbly” to them, mentioning that some looked outlined with the brush. That’s right — they were. So I worked on the sky some more, and the result was a more believable, but totally conventional summer sky. The painting lost its strangeness and its reason for being. The lesson in that is never to forget what inspired you in the first place. Even if they weren’t painted that well, the clouds were actually better the first way, and served their purpose more as part of this diary — they were specific. I’m glad I took a photo of the page before I changed it, but also glad this happened because it reinforced something I knew but had apparently forgotten.
We had an early lunch of smoked salmon on bagels, and at noon watched the match between Egypt and Argentina, which was heartbreaking, with Egypt leading nearly the entire game but then Argentina made a comeback and scored three goals close to the end.
After that I made some brownies, and worked on a drawing of the garden from the balcony above it, which did not go so well. I did another of yesterday’s flowers, and that was better. Jonathan took a nap and I wrote the above letter.
Merlin identified a rose breasted grosbeak singing in the trees bordering the driveway, though I couldn’t get my eye on it.
July 8, 2026. Wednesday.
A late start. I dreamt my bones were disintegrating and woke with pain in my left hip; I had been lying on that side for hours, apparently. I got up and tried to shake off the bad dream. The hip pain disappeared once I moved, as it usually does, and I was able to go back to sleep but the night felt disturbed and not very restorative.
When Jonathan opened the bedroom blinds everything outside was green except for a single white birch trunk, a few patches of blue sky behind the complicated web of leaves -- yellow, chartreuse, darker greens. I lay there thinking about how to paint it. From this place where I’m writing, at the dining table, you are completely surrounded by green.
It’s so quiet. The morning bird songs have lessened, and now there’s only an occasional croak from the frogs in the little lily pond.
8:30 pm
The day has gotten progressively better from its rocky start. I played the piano for an hour this morning, and flute for another good while this afternoon -- Handel sonatas. Two of them, the C-major and F-major, are in pretty good shape, in addition to the g-minor that I performed last September. I’m really enjoying this piano.
Later on I did another drawing of the garden, standing out on the balcony beyond the screened porch, while the hummingbird fed directly above my head, completely at ease. This one was better than yesterday’s but it’s still just too busy, too much going on in a small space with no help from my tools. The pointed fountain pen is not the right thing to be using, but that’s the limitation I set for myself.
After that I read the week’s allotment for book group -- the first 15 chapters of The Grey Bees, set in the grey zone between Ukraine and Russia. I was telling Jonathan about it and how the isolation described felt quite a bit like here, although the war situation made it very different. It’s a good book, and immersed me completely in an unfamiliar place, where a jar of lard or a few eggs were a great luxury, and walking to the next village, which still had electricity, was extremely dangerous due to snipers, shelling, and unexploded weapons. The distance to a village would be about the same as here.
After finishing the reading, around 4:00, I decided to go swimming. It’s quite warm today, 82 maybe, although the sun has been going in and out of clouds. It turned out that we caught the last gasp of sunlight before storm clouds moved in. The water is warmer than two days ago. I swam out about 20 feet and then along the shoreline in both directions several times. The rocks on the shore are gorgeous -- big granite boulders, with the trees and shrubs and ferns growing around and over them, and I wished I could draw or paint them. For that reason I’m sorry we haven’t been able to use a boat but they are all stored and heavy and it just hasn’t seemed worth the trouble to get them out. I had thought I could pull one of the kayaks out by myself but...no.
I saw a sunfish this morning under the dock, its blue fins bright when they caught the sunlight. From the house, I had seen an animal run across the dock -- either a mink or a small, young muskrat — but I didn’t see any signs of it when I was down there.
After my swim, and showering and warming up, I did another watercolor, this time of the vase of wildflowers I picked on Monday. I didn’t do a preliminary drawing -- I haven’t for any of these sketchbook watercolors — it was all direct brushwork and I am satisfied with this one, although it could use a little more depth of color. The glass Ball jar holding the flowers came out well too. For once I stopped before anything was overworked.
We grilled a steak for dinner, and talked while eating about how living this way feels familiar, and what might work as a substitute -- maybe a retreat center, or some other way to get out of the city for a night and a couple of days now and then. For just painting, I can make do with the wilder parks near the city. I need to be more intentional, more creative about ideas -- and to actually do it instead of complaining or feeling bereft.
July 9, 2026. Thursday.
Our first rainy day. I’m glad for it. The energy of the house has changed from exterior to interior like a compass arrow pointing in the opposite direction, and the silence feels even more complete. Also, the outside seems less inviting because the bibittes* must be terrible! The hummingbird is visiting the feeder nevertheless -- its metabolism requires it. When I went out on the deck during a lull in the rain and stood near the feeder, the male came and alighted in the bush below, fixing me with a stare.
*bugs
The oxalis flowers that were closed when I painted them last night are open now. They’re the most unusual, beautiful, slightly-coral red, more rose than red, but with a definite coral tinge. The shadow color is a deeper red. I can’t think of an equivalent.
It’s a day for drawing, painting, and playing music. In the late afternoon, we’ll watch France vs Morocco.
Jonathan didn’t sleep well, but I did, and feel more rested than yesterday after that bad night. My back and hips are better but still stiff in the morning, and I can’t tell about walking long distances since there has been none of that here. Swimming was all right, the usual slight back discomfort is less when I remember to swim very flat and avoid arching my back, and outweighed by the pleasure and familiarity I always feel in the water. It tells me I can probably incorporate the pool into my exercise routine again now.
This lack of vigorous, regular physical exercise has affected me a lot over the past two months. It’s harder to control my weight when I don’t exercise, but I have tried not to worry about it here because I knew this would just make me unhappy. Unusually for me, I’ve eaten brownies and ice cream and some bread and rice and potatoes, though not much, and had a glass of wine or a gin and tonic most evenings. But there is also the fear of loss of strength and increased vulnerability, and the accompanying worry that this is what old age could look like. I am perhaps more of my father’s daughter than I even realize. I’ve thought of him saying, “Beth, I’ve always lived with a lot of pain. But I’m pretty tough.” These bad joints are his, I’m sure, and what I have to learn is how to have his courage and toughness. (I’m not convinced that my default reaction, learned from him, of moving as much as possible after an injury is always the best, though. This time I hurt myself more.)
2:40 pm
We drove back to Entrelacs to the little store that reminds us of Dan&Whits in Norwich, Vermont, though it’s much smaller, and bought more of the good yogurt from St-Jean-de-Matha, some Quebec strawberries, hamburger, 200 g of black forest ham for sandwiches, some lettuce. The chicken we got there was better than what we buy in Montreal and we’ll get a bit more before we leave. All the clerks are local francophones — we spoke to them in French, of course, but no one ever mistakes us for Quebec natives — and they were friendly and welcoming.
Today I wrote emails, worked on the planning tasks I promised to do for Les Journées de la Culture in September, and played the piano while Jonathan made lunch. I’m working on the Short Preludes and Fugues of Bach that I found in A.’s cabinet -- I used to play these often and my fingers seem to remember them, but not perfectly.
Later I did two drawings: one of the hummingbird feeder, since it feels iconic of our experience of this place, and the other of the blooming oxalis plants on the deck with the evergreens and lake behind. A lighter touch in both worked better, but still isn’t quite right. I’ll try to do another watercolor later. There is no interesting light, it’s a very overcast day with periods of showers. That in itself is interesting and worth painting but I can’t bear to be outside with all the extra bugs that come out on damp days, so it’s from the screened porch or nothing.
Time, so inexorable. The days here have continued to feel slower than our life in the city. Still, at 1 pm I do a drawing, it takes an hour, then we drive to the store and shop and unpack and make tea, another hour, it’s already 3 pm, time for a watercolor or maybe flute practice, then at 4 we’ll watch the game, and after that make dinner, late-ish, and it will be pretty dark by then so no more music, just some reading probably and then bed and another day, our next-to-last full day here, will be done. And so it goes, day after day in one’s life, and what does it all add up to, or is it totally pointless to even think of it that way? One should enjoy the passing of time, stay in the present moment, pay attention, be as fully present as possible -- this is my belief and my effort and my hope and yet now, as my life feels like it is running out faster and faster, I just want time to go a little more slowly before one of us is left alone, and the time remaining will feel like an eternity then.
It’s pouring now. Looking at the rain teeming down across the trees I’m reminded of those old drawings I found of rue Rachel and Parc Lafontaine in the rain -- they were good ones, better than I realized at the time, on decent paper, and also done with non-permanent ink, but with a larger-nib fountain pen. I could try to capture the rain, but maybe I will just stop for the day.
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